A Day in the Life of Chaos

I hate guns.  Well I don't hate them, I just don't care for them much.  I have gone shooting but killing is simply not my thing and shooting at a target for hours loses its fun after about 15 minutes.   I grew up in a gun culture, how could Alaska be anything else?  When I was 15 one of my friends had a semi-automatic rifle.  Another friend had a pistol with a laser site.  We used to go out and shoot at cans from time to time.  I have never owned a working gun and really I don't have much desire to change that.  I think in my mind guns represent an expression of power over another person.  It is an artificial expression of power supported by a tool that can take life in an instant. Sure I suppose I would feel differently if I lived on the frontier.  If I had a cabin in the mountains I might even buy a shotgun.  In my professional life I am surrounded by guns.  I quietly work around more weapons than most people might see in their lifetimes.  Still, these guns are all t

A few weeks back I wrote an essay on things that go yelp in the night.  It was a recounting of a terrible sound that nearly froze my blood in the darkness of the night.  Coyotes were on the loose.  Nature was at my back door.  I live in a town with a buffer of woods edging the back of my property.  It is an area where deer roam and coyotes stalk the night.  Snakes hide under rocks by a stream and turtles move from sun spot to sun spot.  Hawks circle over head and occasionally a lake heron will fly buy surveying the gold fish and koi in my ornamental pond. While frightening and savage there is something peaceful about knowing I coexist with the natural world so close to my door. Just beyond the flickering light of the Animal Channel on my 56 inch LCD tv is a primeval world of hunters and the hunted. The people that populate my job are a curious mix of educated northerners transplanted here by some cosmic design and red neck Task Force officers.  A Task Force officer is simply a pol